Well, this is just weird. When I was migrating from Reddit to this fediverse world I chose .ml and thought it was short for “machine learning” which seemed as a cool domain for me at the time.

FYI, two letter TLDs are country/region/jurisdiction specific. There’s an ISO standard for that.

• .tv Tuvalu
• .me Montenegro
• .fm (Federation of) Micronesia

Some countries append additional modifiers to classify their uses:

• .uk United Kingdom
• .co.uk Company
• …

Three or more are generic (traditional or new)

• .com, .net, .org, …

In some cases, Uncle Sam said “first!” and it stuck.

• .edu Education (MURICA)
• .mil Military (MURRICA)
• .gov Government (MURRRICA)

Just like what happens with Mali, what some silicon valley hipsters decide as a ‘fun’ acronym is just that, a fun thought. If the corresponding government decides to take away a specific domain, they probably can.

.mil Military (MURRICA)

That is what made this whole .ml problem. Some people have apparently accidentally leaked American state secrets to Mali by typo.

That’s a poor excuse. If something is secret or higher it has a different TLD. The SIPRnet uses .smil for example.